Chicago Getting Its Own ESPN Site

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Feb 19, 2009 9:40PM

Wow, ESPN really likes us. Following the lead of The Huffington Post, who started up the now-(in)famous ChuffPo, ESPN is launching a Chicago-centric site appropriately called ESPNChicago. Great! More ways to hear about the Cubs' curse and the Bears inability to find a decent quarterback. The site - the first city-specific site from ESPN - will launch in April and, for the time being, the address redirects to the ESPN 1000 AM site,

In addition to sports news, the site will have social-networking aspects, a travel partnership and even a way to organize your local softball team.

And like the cable channel, ESPN Chicago will feature its own “SportsCenter”-style newscast with a three- to five-minute highlight reel of the day’s top stories. It will have original content and include breaking news, provided by Chicago’s WLS-Ch. 7. The ABC affiliate and ESPN are both owned by The Walt Disney Co.

ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski, a former Chicago Tribune sportswriter, will write for the site. Other ESPN contributors will write for the Chicago site, as will ESPN 1000 radio personalities Tom Waddle and Bruce Levine.

Marc Horine, a vice president with ESPN digital media, said, “We already have a user base with millions of people coming to [ESPN.com] looking for Chicago sports. At its core, the mission is simple: to super-serve Chicago sports fans...We thought it was the right time to pool everything together into one destination, a platform that cuts across all ESPN media.” While other potential advertisers got a look at a beta version of the site, MillerCoors is being described as "the site’s charter advertiser."